Chapter Nine
NOW
From his motel room door, Bobby murmured, "I'll get dressed."
Nothing said by the woman from the hospital had prepared Sam for this version of his brother. He'd seen variations of it before, recalled moments when something had screwed with Dean, but this was different.
He approached the Impala slowly, without excess movement. He'd seen Dean badly hurt, very drunk, caught in the throes of a nightmare, and he had learned that when not physically restrained, nothing interfered with his brother's insanely fast reflexes, or his ability to harm anyone viewed as a potential enemy. Sam had found that out the hard way many years before. And right now, Dean held a gun in his hands.
It was a shotgun loaded with rock salt, but Sam nonetheless did not wish to catch a blast. He'd seen what happened when a human chest got in the way. It had taken him a long time to pick rock salt out of his brother when he'd been shot at close range, and Sam had seen the residual pock marks and bruising in his flesh.
As usual, he winced inwardly. That memory always bothered Sam greatly, since he'd been the one who'd fired the gun. He hadn't been in his right mind, but that kind of guilt never faded.
Dean did not appear to be in his right mind at the moment.
But Sam had no time to consider the cause, or potential explanations. There was his brother to contend with, who was clearly not himself. But boosting a car to get him back across town? Dean could do that in his sleep.
Sam eased forward, then paused at the rear quarter panel. "Hey?"
Dean stared at him fixedly with an expression of such intensity it made the hair on the back of Sam's neck twitch. Under that gaze, he felt like just possibly he was more than enemy. Was in fact prey.
"Dean? You in there, man?"
Dean tilted his head just slightly, as if contemplating the question. As if translating the language.
"Hey," Sam repeated. "You okay? What's up with you? I thought you were staying at the hospital overnight."
Dean blinked twice. Long, hard blinks, as if to clear his vision. One hand rose, touched the side of his head briefly, then fell back.
Sam maintained an even, casual tone with effort. He felt like his brother was a hand grenade, and he didn't know if the pin was still in, or pulled. "Dean. Dude. What's up? What are we doing?"
Dean's face was very smooth, almost devoid of expression. In poor light his eyes were wide, pupils swollen, fixed. It was almost as if he were waiting.
"How about you put the gun down, come inside the room, and we'll talk," Sam suggested. "Come on, Dean. Let's go inside. Beer, whiskey, porn-on-demand . . . the works."
Two doors down, the light depending from the motel roof overhang buzzed, then popped. Glass shattered, fell, as the bulb exploded.
Sam automatically reached to the small of his back for his gun, vastly accustomed to lights going wonky when the supernatural appeared. But his attention was yanked away by his brother almost at once.
The fracturing of the bulb broke Dean's reverie. He spun, bringing the shotgun into position to fire, and for a moment Sam thought he might just do it. But he, like Sam, instantly registered no threat, just noise. Nothing more than a broken light bulb.
Dean abruptly turned back to the car and slammed down the trunk lid. The shotgun remained in his right hand, and Sam noted he'd tucked the handgun bearing consecrated iron rounds into his front waistband.
Sam drew in a breath to speak, but Dean beat him to it with a clipped, aggressive tone. "Going."
No more than that. "'Going?'" Sam echoed, frowning in bafflement. "We're going somewhere? Is that why you left the hospital? Where, Dean? Where do you want to go?"
"Going."
Dean seemed more alert now, but this? This was simply bizarre. It was an announcement, not an explanation.
Sam nodded, hands partly raised in hopes of keeping calm a potentially dangerous situation. "I got that. Going where?" He stepped closer to his brother. "Where do you want to go?"
Dean moved around to the driver's side door. "Desert."
"You want to go to the desert now?"
"Desert."
"Dean, we decided to go tomorrow night . . . well, technically I guess now it's tonight, but—" Sam waved a hand. "Never mind. Why do you want to go now?"
Dean dug into a pocket, tried another, came up empty-handed. His expression was genuinely puzzled, but riddled with impatience.
"If you're looking for the keys, I have them," Sam explained. "Don't you remember earlier today? You kicked Bobby and me out of your hospital room. We came back across town to do some research. Remember?" He patted a pocket in his jeans. "Keys are right here."
Dean put out a hand, the request, the demand, obvious.
"Nuh-uh." Sam rounded the back of the car, paused not far from his brother. He very carefully kept his hands in view and still, but settled his weight in such a way that he could move swiftly if necessary. "Not until you can speak in sentences of more than one word. Because you're not in any shape to be driving . . . or going anywhere, for that matter. Dean—come inside. Let's figure this out."
Dean tilted his head. A frown slipped across his face, was gone. Reappeared. He touched his temple, took his hand away, then twitched from head to toe.
It was Bobby outside his door, dressed and quiet. "Sam, maybe we ought to let him go. Or take him there, rather. This might be our best chance to find out what's goin' on. It began in the desert. Maybe it ends there."
"Or gets worse."
"It's not gonna get any better inside a motel room, or at the hospital."
"Going," Dean said, with emphasis in the word.
Single words. Was his brother so scrambled he now could only converse in a weird, abbreviated fashion?
Sam made the decision. "Okay, Bobby, maybe you're right. You'll follow?"
"I'm thinkin' it's better I come with," Bobby said, "because I don't believe either one of us has any idea what's goin' on inside your brother's head. Hell, I doubt he knows. I'll sit behind him, be ready to move if necessary."
It chased a chill down Sam's spine as he glanced at Bobby across the Impala's roof. "You think he's a danger to us?"
"Look at him, son. You tell me."
Sam glanced back. Dean stood by the car staring at him fixedly with avid eyes, eyes that assessed. He held a shotgun, had one handgun at his back and one at his front. His posture radiated preparedness, the poised grace of a predator ready to move. To attack. It was a honed, sharp intensity. It poured off him as Sam had witnessed so often before, the raw, kinetic power of Dean's body.
It slipped through Sam's mind. John Winchester's perfect soldier.
Only at this moment, that soldier wasn't even close to being himself.
"Yeah," Sam murmured, "right now I think he's probably a danger to anything that moves." He dug into his pocket, pulled out the keys, held them up so they glinted in the motel lighting, displayed them to Dean. "Okay, we'll go. But I'm driving. You've got shotgun." In more ways than one, he reflected. To Bobby, he said, "Can you step into our room and grab the duffels, pull the door closed? We've got hot weather supplies, other stuff in there. Water and first aid's in the trunk."
Dean reached out, smacked the top of the car with the flat of his hand. "Now."
Sam reflected that he didn't quite look like his brother, not entirely, but that controlled detonation was certainly quintessentially Dean Winchester.
# # #
Sammy couldn't help. He knew it. Sam was pinned to the wall, and Bobby was outside making sure the sprinkler system kept spraying holy water, trying to buy them time. Time to beat the deal.
But there was no time left. None at all. The clock struck midnight, just like in all the stories, and Ruby—no, Lilith - opened the door to the hellhound.
"Sic 'im, boyyy," she drawled.
And it did. It pounced, caught flesh, dragged him down, tore clothing, shredded flesh, muscle, viscera.
Sammy couldn't help.
And Dean went to hell.
Where the screaming of a soul in torment was a symphony to the demons who not only reveled in the sound, but brought it into being with exquisite instrumentation. Razors, knives, hooks, every kind of torture device known to mankind. And every one was employed. Dean became intimately acquainted with each. Acquainted, too, with the chief torturer, the demon called Alastair, who put on and took off so many hellbound vessels Dean could never be certain which was cutting on him.
He had come to know that he had no body in hell. Only a soul. But the soul conjured an image of the human vessel, and it was that vessel that experienced the agony. It felt like arms and legs, guts and liver, eyes and tongue, all cut off, cut out, dug out. He could not count how many times he'd been flayed upon the rack, how often his blood was set to boiling in veins and arteries before it spilled out in its entirety upon the floor, leaving him exsanguinated.
He told himself every day that his body was elsewhere, that the vessel he knew as his own was not in hell and therefore could not be harmed. That he should not view himself as a man, as a human, as the clay that had come of John and Mary Winchester. So he conjured a construct in his mind: he was essence, not reality. And essence could not be hurt.
But Alastair took that from him, too. Alastair rent the essence as much as he rent the soul, and therefore the body.
Every day.
And the day came when he could no longer bear it. When the last thread of selfhood broke. Ruby had told him he'd lose his humanity, would become a demon. Perhaps telling Alastair 'Yes' was the first step toward surrendering that humanity, the first step on the road that led to demonhood.
He'd said 'Yes.'
And in his head he heard: "You will be given the opportunity to say it again. Do this, accept this task, and you will be saved. You will be redeemed."
Then another voice. That deep river of tone, so familiar, so beloved. It was safe harbor, that voice. "Dean. Son."
He knew it. Even in hell, he knew that voice.
"Dad?"
Silence.
"Dad?"
"We all make choices, kiddo. Sometimes they're the right ones. Sometimes they're the wrong ones. But we have to make the choices if we're to move on, if we're to accomplish anything. I made my choice when I learned of your mother's history, when it came clear what she and her father, and those before her father, did, and what I needed to do. Then an angel took the knowledge from me, but here . . . well, here all is known. And I realized why it was so easy for me to become a hunter when your mother was murdered. It's what she was. It was in her blood. It was in my blood. And it was required, if I were to kill that yellow-eyed son of a bitch. You can't be soft, son. Not in Vietnam . . . not when chasing a demon. Survival depends on it."
"Dad—are you here? I thought you got out. I saw you get out!"
"My soul isn't there anymore, Dean. But memory, yes. And you're there. Blood of my blood, bone of my bone. I can't come there. I can't get you out. But so long as you don't forget me, I'll come to you. Son . . . listen to me. It's about survival. Do what you have to do. Be what you have to be. Say what you have to say. Just know that no matter what may happen, I'm proud of you. You're my son. My eldest. I was hard on you. I know that, Dean. I wish it were different. But what I taught you, what you learned, is your deliverance. You will survive this. "
"Dad—I said 'Yes'. To Alastair."
"That 'Yes' will hurt you, son. But—"
Nothingness. Silence. Absence.
"Dad?"
Emptiness.
"Dad?"
And Alastair said, "Daddy's left the building."
# # #
He roused abruptly, and he roused hard. His body jerked spasmodically against the leather upholstery and his right hand flailed and struck the rolled-up window. "Dad?"
His brain registered the feel of the seat, the sound of the car. He knew where he was, but not why. And when the Impala bobbled on the road, he clawed his way out of the dregs of dream or memory and sat upright, realizing he was not behind the wheel.
"Damn it, Sam, if you're gonna drive her, keep her on the road!"
"Holy crap!" His brother expelled it on a hard breath, straightening the wheel to bring the car back into line. "Dean? Are you with us? Is it you?"
"Where are we?" With effort, Dean sorted out arms and legs, cracked a stiff neck. "Still in Utah?"
Sam shot quick glances at him and at the road as he drove through the darkness. "You remember Utah?"
"Hell yes, I remember Utah." Dean glowered out the window, trying to make sense of the vast arid emptiness beneath a waning moon and a tablecloth of stars. "Where are we?"
"Arizona."
"Why are we in Arizona? And why are you driving? And where are we going?" He touched his brow. "Was I asleep?"
"We're in Arizona for a chupacabra, and I'm driving because you had some kind of weird . . . episode . . . and we're going back out to the Superstitions because you insisted on it. But we needed to go anyway. Were going to go, in fact, tonight, but you kind of decided you wanted to go earlier. And no, you weren't asleep. You were . . . well, I don't know what you were. 'Not normal' is the best I can come up with."
Dean stared at his brother. "What the hell are you talking about?"
From directly behind him, a gravelly voice asked, "You want the whole novel, or the Cliff's Notes version."
Dean jumped. "Jesus." Then he turned. "Bobby? What are you doing here?"
"This is what I was talking about," Sam told Bobby, staring into the rearview mirror. "It's like nothing happened, but he's missing time."
A shudder passed through Dean's body. "Four months topside. Forty years below."
Save for the rumble of the car, all was silent.
"Oh, Christ," Sam murmured finally. "I was hoping you'd remember all kinds of other things, but not that."
He felt distant. Detached. Different. "How can I not remember? I said 'Yes.'"
# # #
"You know where we're going?" Bobby asked.
In the thrumming darkness of the Impala—he hadn't turned on the radio—Sam nodded. "I've got GPS coordinates. We're almost there. In fact . . . " Sam slowed the car, let it roll to the side of the road, parked it but did not immediately turn off engine or headlights. "There's a trail. We'll go up it about about 200 yards, then cut off. If we walk one mile north, we'll be right where Dean and I were when . . . well, when whatever happened, happened."
"How's your brother looking?"
"Same as when we left the motel. Just staring out the windshield."
Bobby grunted. "I haven't known him to be this silent since your dad first brought you and your brother by. You squalled up a storm, drove us all crazy, though you shut right up when Dean held you. In fact, I think that's what made him start speaking again. Had to talk to his baby brother."
Sam looked at the slack body in the seat next to him. Within minutes of their departure from the motel, Dean had lapsed into utter silence. Not even single words had issued from his mouth in answer to Sam's questions, or of his own volition. His head lolled against the seat.
Sam shook his head. "I can't imagine Dean not talking a mile a minute."
"Shock, Sam. In one night he lost his mother, his home, and the father he'd known, because that's when John changed. The only constant he had then was you. Hell, you're the only constant he has now, too."
Sam had no memory of those early days. Certainly nothing of his mother's horrific death, of being snatched out of the crib by his father and pushed into his brother's arms. No memory at all of spending time at the salvage yard in those early days, no memories of Bobby's until he was three or four, and those recollections were but snatches. He didn't even remember Dean in those first two years, which seemed incomprehensible to him. Let alone that his brother - his wise-ass, mouthy, snarky brother - had stopped talking altogether for a while.
Sam looked at his brother's profile. So pure. So still. So utterly unlike Dean. And it hurt. It hurt terribly.
A wave of despair made his voice shake. "Bobby . . . I don't know what to do."
The older man sighed heavily. "Neither do I, son. And I wish to hell I did."
Then Dean shuddered, flailed, sat upright. "Now," he gasped, reaching for the door.
Sam lunged, grabbed. Came up empty. Dean had yanked up the lock stem, pulled open the door, and was out of the car.
Was running.
